The Russian World

June 12 June again this year marks the most important national holiday in post-Soviet Russia. But in order to avoid conflicting interpretations over its origins, Putin goes as far to refer to Prince Rjurik, the mythological Variegus chieftain who, according to ancient chronicles, started the history of Rus' in the year 862 in Novgorod, even before the foundation of Kiev

Many people in Russia tried to honour his memory on June 4, his birthday. His Anti-Corruption Foundation remains an important legacy, transcending the capabilities of his followers or the prestige of his wife Julia, and may still have a role to play even in a Russia now locked in neo-Soviet totalitarianism.

A series of video-documentaries circulated by Maša Pevčik, one of Naval'nyj's best-known contributors, shift all the blame and responsibility for what is happening today onto the bandits and corrupt people who prevented the development of a free and democratic society in the 1990s. Putin propagandists and opposition publicists, older and the younger generations, all cloaked in guilt and resentment, speak to those years.

An in-depth analysis by Meduza's Signal column assessed the real level of popular support for the war. The “majority of Russians” and poll respondents in polls are not the same, and the sample is becoming less and less credible. Surveys are a means of “manipulation” and “information”. The "average Russian male", who repeats patriotic slogans, is an example.

The first decree approved as soon as the ceremony for the start of his fifth term is about the ‘Fundamentals of Historical Education Policy’. The anxiety to rewrite history is the sentiment that stirs Putin's conscience most of all, as well as that of the entire generation afflicted by the resentment of the end of the Soviet Union. And it is this global and eschatological vision that Putin is now also trying to embody side by side with Xi Jinping in Tiananmen Square.

On several occasions, Putin said that he had no intention of staying in power for life, but the matter was shelved long ago. During the latest presidential inauguration, Patriarch Kirill invoked upon him God's blessing “until the end of your existence and until the end of time, as we say.”

During the Holy Thursday service, Patriarch Kirill recited a special prayer ‘for the victory of holy Rus’", which intensifies the war litanies imposed on priests, on pain of deprivation of clerical status if they refuse to pronounce them. The Easter celebrations must recompose the people of believers to show that Russia has defeated the evil within, finding the right path to sobornost.

Because of the war in Ukraine, the country is drifting into an era of denial and distancing from the "enemy", to assert spiritual, moral, political, and economic "orthodoxy". Today, new "global models" are being imposed, which are not easily digestible, not only in Russia or the East, but also in Europe and in English-speaking countries. The persona of the president now overlaps with that of the tsars of the past.

The question of post-colonialism in Russia is the great underlying theme imposed by the Russian war in Ukraine. Behind the claims of the 'Russian world' are the aspirations of the many peoples who for centuries have been subjected to the imperial domination of different ideologies, from the Tsarist to the Soviet, and today by the Kirill-Putin Eurasian vision, which by taking on Ukraine has in fact uncovered the Pandora's box of all Russian history.

According to the head of the Levada Center, Russia's leading sociological research institute, “only 10 per cent of Russians are actively interested in politics, and the war involves a super-politicisation of a minority in the face of the depoliticisation of the masses.” Only 30 per cent of Russians are willing to trust people outside their ever-shrinking circle of relatives and friends.

The reflections of the Moscow attack overshadow proclamations of victory in Ukraine. A text by the Sobordella of the Orthodox Church goes beyond the ideological motivations of the war and defends the 'purity' of the Russian people from 'invading migrants'. The fight against foreign 'ghettos' in the cities and the 'return' to the 'traditional' division between population and productive forces in the territory.

Gutted by last week’s terrorist attack, the concert venue inside a Moscow mall was a symbol of the city’s post-Soviet “reconstruction”. Russians now fear leaving their homes and getting into a taxi driven by a Tajik. In the meantime, state-sponsored public events have been halted while “different” ones have been banned.